iris
by lokogato-sama
Summary: Ryou can't ascertain his existence. Bakura falls in love with the sound of Ryou's voice. Twisted weirdness barely fit for 'romance', and a good deal of snogging ensue. RR! RBxYB


Summary: Ryou can't ascertain his existence. Bakura falls in love with the sound of Ryou's voice. Twisted weirdness barely fit for 'romance', angst, eventual death – please R and R!!

iris

_/And I'd give up forever to touch you/_

Touch me, gods, do it.

Touch me, dammit! Anything, anyway, hurt me kill me make me writhe scream _scream_ just _touch_ me!

_/Cause I know that you feel me somehow/_

Mou hittori no ore. Omote.

Weak, weak, pathetic screaming on the ground arms stretched out pleading commanding begging imperious all at the same time.

_Touch me, touch me let me know I can feel I can feel _

Lying on the ground, voice giving way, beautiful strange voice that can sing like the best of the idiots he listens to on those headphones of his, blasting away too loud. Yadonushi is going to go deaf someday.

_Onegai … kami, just …_

If he doesn't scream himself hoarse and mute and die in his apathy, lying there on the pristine white linoleum that he swept and scrubbed just yesterday, humming along to his songs with an absent smile on his face, and today mad in his sickness in his insanity in his desperation to know if he's alive.

Learn how it feels, yadonushi. Learn how it feels to live alone in darkness forgotten uncared for unloved untouched and wonder wonder wonder forever and ever if you are alive, if you are a physical being or a wisp of imagination and space to be torn apart at any second. Learn how it feels to wish for the latter, so you _could_ be destroyed and at least know somehow you exist at all.

_Mou hittori no boku … onegai …_

Go on, Ryou. Scream. Do it. I love your voice raw and in pain and I will go to any ends to obtain that addictive sound.

Scream for me, scream …

_/You're the closest thing to heaven that I'll ever be  
And I don't want to go home right now/_

Calm today, sitting at the kitchen table working feverishly on homework, calculating proving scratching with pencil in undecipherable mathematical language that I refuse to believe, because they made up a number. Speaking quietly to himself, reciting to himself:

_Multiply by four-thirds and pi and r squared_

In words I don't understand and don't care to and I'm terrifically bored so I sit as close as I can to him without so much as brushing him and stare at a spot on the wall just above his head, looming.

His pencil flinches, just a bit, enough to make his nine ridiculously long-stemmed.

_Anou, Bakura – could you perhaps not block so much of the light?_

Polite, all the time, why, damn it? Polite to the point of being a nonentity, a quivering pulsing explosive mass of polite –san –kun –sensei onegai arigato moushi wake arimasen always thanking for nothing apologizing for someone else. Dangerous, unstable like _die-na-might_. And I ignore him of course and he lowers his eyes, breath catching in throat, looks away down at his homework and stares, unable to do the next question.

Funny, I never noticed before how thick and dark his eyelashes are against his cheek.

_Onegai, Bakura-_

Begging, groveling almost for me to acknowledge his existence.

He loves being taken over. He loves doing everything, revels the sensations left over when he regains consciousness, the faint trace of darkness evil bloodlust on his hands and skin and the scent of it buried in his clothes, and he lies there sometimes for hours smelling it and knowing he exists.

_Bakura-_

Scream, omote, yadonushi.

_Bakura-_

Come now, Ryou, no need to play valiant little man with your own other half, is there? I know you as none other and you want to scream, you feel it welling up and bubbling through and forcing to your tongue and ah – you swallow it, brave attempt, brave little child.

I don't want you brave.

I want you screaming and begging for anything, anything –

_Bakura –_

Yadonushi-

Scream.__

_/And all I can taste is this moment  
And all I can breathe is your life  
Cause sooner or later it's over  
I just don't want to miss you tonight/_

I don't – black void – no one touches me sees me feels me do I exist can you _hear_ me can you see me collapsing on the street screaming screaming screaming at the sky at the clouds at God gods angels demons the Devil Set anyone at all.

Can you hear me?

Am I coming through?

Am I on the other side of some strange one-way glass where I can see you and you can't see me?

I can't touch you; you know? I'm too weak too afraid, afraid my hand will go through you and you'll flinch as if you passed a ghost, or worse you won't notice and you'll walk on by and I'll collapse into a pile of pathetic _thing_.

And mou hittori no boku … will laugh and say

_Scream, you know you want to._

And he'll take over me when he needs to and I'll inhale the second-hand feel of being alive from the breath of one millennia-dead. And there will be no one to hold me or even brush past me because no one wants to touch skin pale as mine hair white as mine eyes desperate and animalistic as mine.

Then there will be

blood

tears

blood metallic red flowing pain my body remembering to be living and heart remembering to beat

and Bakura rolling sarcastic eyes saying

_You don't prove you're alive others do_

And there will be sound enveloping me like my darkness never does and all will end in one falling falling wailing moment-

_/And I don't want the world to see me  
Cause I don't think that they'd understand/_

Gaki.

How does one manage to be so be-damned _happy_ all the time? The boy, the tri-spiked tri-color leather-clad midget, is the literal embodiment of the word _genki_. I'm completely serious, Ryou, if you took the Pharaoh's brat and compressed him into a bottle you could sell him –

_Essence of genki! Never be sad another day in your life!_

Although this would entail the tagging along of the bastard – Kaiba, his name is? – that bastard's damn annoying dog, and the dog's annoying henchman with the bird-hair, and, shudder, the speech-making bitch that really needs to start wearing bras if she doesn't want Yugi to nosebleed to death.

Oh, shut up, omote, I'll damn well say what I please. It's not as if they can hear me, and it's not as if they could hear you even if I spoke through you.

They don't pay attention to you; didn't you notice?

Oh, I see not.

Ah well. Too bad.

Of course they don't. When was the last time one touched you and acknowledged your existence by anything more than a casual directionless nod? Go on. It was Honda, and you were unconscious and I wasn't even there.

Right. I believe you as much as you believe yourself.

Yadonushi, you need to come to terms with your life and face reality –

Ah! Mite kure, yadonushi! Kirei yo –

What makes you think I'll steal it? Just because it's shiny and perfect and gold and probably valuable doesn't mean I'll steal it –

You're _offering_ your body? Whatever has come over you? You who always beg for the side of right and – ah. I see.

If you're offering, I will – go on, beg me, grovel at my feet, speak piteously speak arrogantly haughtily any way at all so I hear your voice and its million millions of nuance and shadow and light and temper, speak.

_So spake the Lord and his people listened_

Feel it now, yadonushi? Feel the power the ability the speed strength everything and feel feel feel live in your sensations and touch the cold gleaming gold, yadonushi, love it live it scream for more, more, more!

_/When everything's made to be broken  
I just want you to know who I am/_

Silence.

Blessed silence.

I will not speak, will not utter a word.

Bakura, touch me – no matter how I scream I cannot change anything and I will remain silent, and see perhaps this way I will fade from existence and prove that I did – exist that is – and there will be silence at my grave and no sound and perhaps no one will come. Perhaps I will have no grave; mayhap I will simply disappear and leave a crumbling house, floors unswept and rooms unkempt, and when my father remembers to see me he'll come and wonder if I was at all.

Silence.

Shh, not a word.

It will all be all right in

the morning.__

_/And you can't fight the tears that aren't coming/_

Ryou – yadonushi –

Why so silent?

You always speak, or cry, or scream, or make some sort of whimpering pitiful noise, yet now why the silence?

Yadonushi, speak to me – please. Say something, anything, make some sort of sound, cry if you must, laugh if you must, just don't leave me in silence silence silence with nothing around me to listen to like the impersonal warmth of the all-consuming darkness.

Yadonushi-

Why?

_/Or the moment of truth in your lies/_

Omote, mou hittori no ore.

What do you want me to do? I will do anything, anything to kill the monster of silence, of Silence, to kill Silence or at least drive it mortally wounded and shrieking in pain from our home, anything! Speak! Scream, do anything!

I grab his shoulders and shake him, voice mad and desperate, and suddenly those bottomless hopeless eyes, sanity almost all gone, look up at me through those lashes in surprise, his mouth opens and there – there – there, oh – oh – the sound, the tiny sound he makes after a week of nothingness is heaven, the slight exhalation of "ah!" all I ever needed to love him –

It's your voice, yadonushi, that I've fallen in love with, your beautiful expressive voice, and I think perhaps your eyes that say nothing and your hair that is so soft and fluffy, and the way you can be perfectly calm and normal one moment and stark raving mad the next –

I hold his shoulders, tight, ask him,

_What do you want me to do for you to speak again?_

And I know then I never want him silent; I want him any way at all but silent, I want him screaming in pain in pleasure laughing in joy in madness in anything anything anything as long as he is not silent.

_Tell me, yadonushi, what do you want?_

And he gathers his courage – I feel it, a slight gasping stretching feeling inside as he steals some of mine, maybe – and he says, in a voice hoarse from disuse and from lack of water,

_Touch me_

I squeeze my fingers tight, tighter, tighter, grip as strong as possible and I know I'm hurting him and perhaps I'll crush his bones but he smiles through the pain and says

_Touch me make me hurt make me scream_

I lean forward, brush our foreheads together, and he continues

_Touch me let me know I live_

I kiss him then, because I think he's getting nervous, I can hear the edge of hysteria trembling on his voice and I don't want him to break down again. His mouth is perfect, is this perfect little cavern, lips parting readily for me so I can memorize his taste and the ridges on the roof of it. He's eager, and I find that he is far from quiet, far from silent, an absolute joy –

I discover, for example, that if I thrust my tongue in deep and sudden he lets out this startled moan, reverberating from his throat, which I find I like.

And I discover that his skin is deliciously sensitive and when I just barely brush my nails down his back he arches and cries out and sometimes he laughs helplessly because he's ticklish, and I find I like that too.

And when I slip his shirt off altogether and start down his neck, his throat vibrates with his gentle gasps and whimpers, and I like that too.

And I discover that if I move my hips just so he moans long loud and frantic, moving forward to try and get as much contact as possible and I like that too.

And if I move fast enough and hard enough when he comes he screams, head thrown back into my name, three harsh panting vowels separated with crisp clear consonants, and when I come into him he does it again, only this time forward head buried against my neck mouth moving against my skin and gasping.

And I love that.

_/When everything seems like the movies/_

Bakura is enjoying himself immensely.

I think he's gone just as mad as I am. Who falls in love with the sound of their other half's voice? But he has, foolishly, narcissistically and he'll do anything to hear me, and I'll do anything to have him touch me, and in the end we have a fair deal and we both enjoy it.

I can't say I don't like it, sensation and passion and touch taste feel everywhere.

His skin is perfect except for his back, where whip marks, not many but enough, run vertically long raised ridges down his back and as we lie on the floor where we just had sex I run my fingers down their length, and he sort of shivers in my arms.

I can make him do that.

I can make him do something.

I can do _something_ and he acknowledges me and I can know I exist.

I pick up his pants where he dropped them and rifle through the pockets, humming softly, and draw out the knife I know he keeps there.

_Yadonushi –_

Shh, Bakura, love, I won't touch you.

One long slash down the back of my arm, perfect red welling up, and I smile that my body lives and my blood flows in warm red rivers and can make stains on the floor that I might wash away tomorrow; mayhap I'll cry over them instead.

Bakura raises his head as a drop hits his cheek, smiles that feral smile, lunges forward to grab my arm and licks at the blood. Hot pink tongue running up and down my arm and I can feel it and him and everything and he smiles as he swallows and starts again.

We start again.

Perfect.

_/Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive___

_And I don't want the world to see me  
Cause I don't think that they'd understand/_

"What has he done to you this time?" Level voice, level purple eyes glaring at the scar on Ryou's hand as if it were me.

Shut up, Pharaoh, I didn't do anything. He did it to himself, and then I licked off the blood, gleaming red, and then we kissed to share the metallic taste.

"Shut up, Pharaoh."

… Yadonushi?

"Bakura didn't do anything."

… Yadonushi?

"I did it to myself."

Pharaoh looks so _shocked_, sweet innocent Ryou just told someone to shut up, and Pharaoh no less – the looks on their faces, yadonushi, priceless. Ryou laughs as I laugh in his head, we both laugh together very mad very blissful very beautiful together laughs entwining and spiraling upwards to mock heaven.

"Bakura-kun, are you alright?" The midget asks, huge eyes concerned.

"I'm perfectly fine." Ryou snaps back.

Pharaoh shakes his head. "I don't believe it. The thief must have done something." Ryou raises an eyebrow.

"Really?" So challenging, such a beautiful new note in his voice, and I come out of the Ring and lean casually on yadonushi's shoulder, and he turns and bites my neck, sharp white teeth digging in and I want him here and now and he turns back to them.

Pharaoh's eyebrows practically touch his hair. Pharaoh's bangs, meet Pharaoh's brows. Pharaoh's brows, meet Pharaoh's bangs. Shake hairs and bow, ha, ha.

_/When everything's made to be broken  
I just want you to know who I am/_

Yami shakes his head; Yugi-tachi follow him as he heads across the street, away from us, pretending not to see us. Pretending, because we are here! We're here, and the proof of it is the way I can touch Bakura, can taste him and feel him and feel the harsh painful bite of him in my throat, and people are avoiding us now, not seeing us, and we're here, here, here, and I can prove it –

Turn around, Pharaoh, you see us, don't you? Turn around and look, look, LOOK, dammit!

They're ignoring us, Bakura, they refuse to see us can't see us can't see we exist and we're standing here we know we exist, don't we, Bakura, love?

Don't we?

DON'T WE?

I am me he is me I am him he is him and we are us together together entwined forever and no one looks, no one looks and I am

me

and he is

me

and we are

Find something random and throw it at them, _come back come back and face us and fight us and do you know our blood is on this deck and what claim lay you to yours have you bled and wept and hurt over your cards over the mindless creatures that serve us and you and everyone?_

And I jump out onto the street after them throwing everything that comes to hand and miss dreadfully and become caught up watching the downward spiral of a leaf and Yugi-tachi turn around and stare.

And stare. And everyone stares. And Bakura says to me,

_Yadonushi, your aim sucks._

And there is a screech, and screams, and Yugi-tachi gasping and pointing and screaming incoherently, and I don't recognize the words, and Bakura says

_Ah_

and then there are screams and cries and tears and blood so red red red and pain so clear and translucent red and everything is red and then there is

nothing.

_/I don't want the world to see me  
Cause I don't think that they'd understand  
When everything's made to be broken /_

I don't think he meant to do it.

Die, I mean.

_/I just want you to know who I am/_

I don't know what happened, exactly, as there was something of a preoccupation with being sucked back into the Ring and falling back into nothingness and the sudden loss of feeling and there was

Ryou, screaming, triumphant angry heartrending passionate agonized exultant vicious beautiful destructive everything human and inhuman and gold and silver and precious things and me and Ryou in his voice, and it was enough to bring me to climax just listening to his voice as it reached

perfection.

_/I just want you to know who I am/_

And in his voice I could hear

Paradise, virgins and swaying trees and golden light and God

Valhalla, meat and wine and drunken laughter and bliss

Eden, lush and vibrant and innocence and purity and heaven

And the Afterlife, the Nile pulsing with life as I knew it, verdant valleys and flawlessness

_Egypt_

and

Ryou.

_/I just want you to know who I am/_

True darkness is complete, all-consuming, enveloping. You can't see any part of yourself in it, and the only way to know your legs are still there is to kick one with the other, and sometimes you miss and there is this panic of losing everything, and I spend my time lost in eternal darkness drawing pictures in my mind, and trying to remember the timbre of his voice.

There is no Time in darkness. Every moment could be a second, or a minute, or a day, week, month, year, millennium.

This is how darkness is. You become the darkness. You meld with the darkness. You lose everything to it and in return it gives you heady intoxicating madness to while away your hours, and I sit and count my fingers and toes and forgetting I can only count to ten anyway, and returning to vain attempts to hear his voice, and wondering

_is Pharaoh dead_

_are they all dead_

_where is the Ring by now_

_how is Egypt_

_how is Japan_

_what happens after you die_

_what happened to Ryou_

_where is Ryou_

And there is an endless repeat of

the arch of a pale back

the curve of a slender neck

the red of a soft mouth

the swish of silvery hair

eyes dark in darkness in passion in lust

and voice indescribable.

_/I just want you to know who I am/_

Darkness cracks into light. Pretty light. Blinding light.

_Bakura_

… voice. Voice of …

_Yadonushi?_

_Bakura_

Voice of … mine.

_Bakura_

_Ryou._

_Touch me._

_/I just want you to know who I am/_

-owari-

[Words: 3538

Paragraphs: 207

Sentences: 182]

Well, there. I've done it again. What, you ask? Two things actually. The first being writing the ending of this fic, and the other being writing a fic with more paragraphs than sentences. Ah well.

The ending was iffy, I know. It's because I'm forcing myself to rewrite the ending of this, after losing the finished version when my laptop crashed TToTT So it's shit. I know.

BUT!

REVIEW anyway, please. Onegai

Oh, and because I feel like shamelessly plugging myself, if you liked the totally random style of this fic (in which it seems Ryou-chan and Baku-chan stole the style of writing usually reserved for Malik/Ymarik fics), go read 'atrophy'. It's a YM/M fic, albeit sort of … odd. Yes. So please go RR it. And such.

REVIEW ONEGAI, MINNA! Even if you hated it :) I promise I won't be insulted.

(I'll probably happier, considering the lack of reviews I get all the time, TTmTT)

lokogato enterprises ltd.

August 24, 2004 5:35 PM


End file.
